Dreams of the Dead
by DesperateCountdown
Summary: The ghost of Neji has invaded the quiet life of Shikamaru, who is mourning over the loss of his sensei. Shikamaru comes to realize that dreams are not always as they seem; Neji learns that not everything is set in stone. ShikaNeji.


**Description: **Hyuuga Neji has been dead for nearly three months now, killed in a messy battle composed of dozens of ninja. But, for some unknown cause, he has interrupted the quiet life of Nara Shikamaru, who is still mourning over the loss of his sensei.

**A/N: **I am embarking on another adventure. And I promise, "Hopeless Passage" will NOT ever be put on hiatus. Even though I'm beginning other projects, such as this one, HP is the fic I care about most right now.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Naruto, nor am I in any way affiliated with Masashi Kishimoto.

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**Dreams of the Dead**

PROLOGUE - "Mercy in Darkness"

_Chapter Word Count: _660_  
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_Chapter Rating: _**K-K+**_  
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"_To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead." _~Samuel Butler

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Nara Shikamaru, 1st Person

We were doomed from the beginning, I assume. His whole being was a well-kept secret. I understood his story, and I understood everything about him, but I never _knew _him. We had participated in many missions together, and we grew up in the same village, but for the entirety of his life he was a self-centered, quiet person.

He had become something was something that was incomprehensible to most. No matter how hard I try to banish him from my mind, though, I find it difficult. He left an imprint on me. His voice resonates in my mind constantly. The touch of his hands are always on mine. His memory remains and always will remain within my own being.

I didn't always know him. I'm glad I didn't know him for that long, to be quite honest. He was one of those beings that you come to love and despise at the same time. He was strange, but not a stranger to me. The night I truly _met _him, I didn't believe that he was real. He frightened me, enthralled me, and took my very breath away. No living thing had ever had that effect on me, and hasn't ever since we parted.

But then again, he wasn't exactly living, was he? He wasn't dead, either. No, he was not a mindless being of fiction. He was not a disgusting, revolting creature that you hear of in storybooks. He was just trapped, needy, pained soul. And naively, as I was very naive back then, I befriended him. I talked to him. I even helped him, as one can only help something that doesn't seem real. Worse than those things, though, I was senseless enough to fall in love with him.

It was the worst mistake of my life; yet surprisingly, it doubled as the most rewarding experience I can remember. And even now, my heart still breaks at the very thought of him, knowing that I was never able to touch him, and knowing that I never will.

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Hyuuga Neji, 1st Person

It took all of my willpower to look away from his weather-worn face and walk away from the window. It was much too difficult to recall the seemingly artificial relationship we had shared. In fact, the time that lapsed between the first moment I began to follow him and the moments that were happening then seemed totally and without a doubt fabricated. However, I didn't see it that way. The time we had spent together was genuine; or so I'd like to think.

I said my goodbyes on a dark winter evening, and the sky was crying a severe, pelting rain.

With a painful jab at my heart, a memory that I assumed had escaped me surfaced: I had died when it was raining–I remembered it so clearly; it was bloody, and it was painful, and remarkably slow. If my throat could have tightened, if I could have cried, I knew I would have.

When I stood in front of him, I longed for him to hold me and pet my hair just like I always wished he could do. I just wanted him with me, the thing I loved, the thing I loathed, the thing that affected me the most in my world.

The things I wished for the most never came to fruition. It took me longer than necessary to accept the fact that I could never be what he needed me to be. I was a fragment of his imagination. I was the substance of his dreams.

I remembered something he had told me during one of our arguments:

"_You with your visions and your dreams." _

But it was ironic that _I _been the one that constantly invaded his psyche and his dreams.

When I left him on that January night, he didn't even bother to look back at me, because he had known that I wouldn't have been there.


End file.
